Considered by many able authorities as the definitive Babe Ruth monograph, Bob Considine’s The BabeRuth Story appeared in 1948. The biography was vaguely companion to the motion picture by the same title, and both works, of course, eddied as the Babe approached his demise. A thousand copies of the book were published with an end page printed to accommodate Ruth’s autograph, and we’d imagine that he fairly fulfilled that signing task. Here offered, in a departure from that exercise, is a first edition copy that the Babe inscribed only. The volume is VG/EX – missing the dust jacket, and the hard cover has sustained some mild surface wear. On the page where we’d commonly expect to find his serialized signing, there instead appears only an inscription, gifting this particular book “To Judy, a wonderful girl…and Dick, a swell guy…From Yours ‘Pops’…1948.”

While the purist may charge that the inscription doesn’t specifically include a ‘Babe Ruth’ signature, we’re inclined to assert that, in spirit, it does…emphatically. The penmanship, as affirmed by our authenticators, is decidedly Ruth’s (and the quality of this entire fountain pen writing is “9-10”). Our appreciation for this piece is borne on the sentimental familiarity that it engenders. Ruth did sign quite a few of these 1948 biographies and, we’d imagine, a meaningful number of those first-instance recipients were virtual strangers to him. The identities of “Judy” and “Dick” are lost to history, but they were obviously in Babe Ruth’s consciousness – in his circle of endeared acquaintances. Because he presented one book to two recipients, we must imagine that they were youngsters, and probably siblings at that. Through nearly a century of his fame, oceans of tracts and accounts have been shared about Babe Ruth, but his identity as “Pops” is novel in the lore and, in this isolated instance, it was specially reserved for “Judy” and “Dick.” LOA from PSA DNA.